Mammoth: A De-Extinction Love Story

A poetic and funny new play about love and destruction, invoking the nostalgia of science and the hard data of the human heart. More…

At a moment in time where we can envision our own extinction, this atmospheric new play meditates upon why we destroy what we love and, once vanished, what compels us to revive what we’ve lost. Opening on the vast Siberian tundra between two hunters in search of tusks and love, "Mammoth" is a bounding and far-reaching new work of theatre engaging the surreal and humorous tenor audiences have come to expect from Buran Theatre.

"The ideas presented here are far bigger than the space of the theater, and that allows them to be heard louder. The show isn't quite perfect: some parts of the play called for greater clarity, and there were a few instances of unneeded self-parody for the sake of easy laughter, when in fact the comedy was already present in the writing. Staging is thankfully simple; it allows the message to come through clearly, and stay with you for some time afterwards."
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"The production isn’t helped enough by the staging for the actors, who are often static and can feel stranded on the white expanse of the set...'Mammoths' ambitions are, like their namesake, epic—larger, perhaps, than our modern imaginations can easily grapple with. For that, Burnett and his creative team deserve our praise. In attempting to transport us to a moment when love was a survival skill and loneliness meant literal death, we may just need more help to get there."
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"There’s a dash too much treacle here, but the writer-director’s main issue is execution. As is common in this sentimental surrealist genre, Burnett writes evocative, impossible stage directions (“The aurora borealis turns on”), but his poor-theater production only sometimes manufactures them. Worse, he leaves pregnant pauses for each invisible event, and so his brief Holocene evening seems to last an Age."
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